Loving Lily (Fair Cyprians of London 6)

Would it give her cause to hope?

Should it?

Hamish put his hand to his head which ached; and not from the hocus pocus smoke that was swirling about the place.

Lady Bradden. She was a baronet’s wife. A member of the upper classes with, no doubt, a loving family who would support and cherish her, and delight at knowing she was safe in London and not still locked up in some terrible asylum in another country.

If Hamish had any duty towards her, it would be to persuade Lily to seek out the people who would help her. If her husband was a cruel man, there had been changes to the law that would protect her. She could go back and live with her father.

Hamish had learned that Lady Bradden had been Miss Taverner before she’d married and that her father was wealthy. If Hamish was to aid her in any way, perhaps it would be to inform her father of his daughter’s whereabouts.

Anything between them of a romantic nature was doomed.

For Hamish was in a different league. A different class.

And Lily was a married woman.

A thumping noise and the clash of a cymbal diverted his line of thought. When he blinked open his eyes, there was Mrs Eustace, dressed in a flowing black gown that contrasted magnificently with her golden tresses and ivory skin, her eyes closed and her plump, rosebud mouth pursed as she hummed tunelessly.

Helpless, he stared. He’d plundered those lips just days before; had run his fingers through those golden tresses. He swallowed down the lump in his throat. Had she indeed resorted to sorcery to bewitch him? For bewitched he certainly was.

Though when he glanced at the white-haired old man who sat in a chair a little distance from her, his bushy eyebrows and moustache twitching as he stared, mesmerised at her, Hamish thought that a great many in this room were under the same spell.

When she began to speak, he could understand why.

She was gentle but compelling. Passionate, yet wholly believable and deeply empathetic.

The old man, who was of course Lord Lambton, asked questions about his daughter, and the spiritualist communing with the lamented departed answered with compassion and insight.

What had Cassandra felt about her father, Lord Lambton asked? Had his attempts to keep her safe been misconstrued as controlling? What of his deep love for her which she’d thrown back at him as less than his fondness for his cat?

Mrs Eustace communed with the dead to bring comfort to the living. She did it in a way that was compelling and believable, and when Hamish saw what it did for Lord Lambton, he began to question his scepticism.

Mrs Eustace’s fame had spread, not because she was a charlatan, but because she was sincere. Others here tonight had come to mend their broken hearts, showing her photographs of their dead loved ones, and speaking brokenly of their regrets that rifts had not been healed before it was too late, or of their final harsh words which could never be taken back.

It was a much noisier gathering than Hamish had expected. Certainly, it had started in silence and with a hushed reverence, but by the end of the evening, a buzz of excitement had infected everyone.

Even Lucy, it seemed, whose eyes were shining as she rose, saying, “I daresay it’s not the done thing to speak to Mrs Eustace when all these people are gathered, but perhaps you could send her a note asking if she’d like to avail herself of a lift home in our carriage.”

Hamish stiffened. “I don’t know, Lucy—”

“It would be rude not to. Why, I’ll ask her.”

Now he and Lucy sat in the carriage, his sister leaning across the small space to declare, “Mrs Eustace, I remember Lord Lambton as an ogre, not the tenderhearted man you’ve revealed. Cassandra spoke of him as if he were a monster. But then, Cassandra had some strange ideas, I will admit. As for tonight, I didn’t know what to expect. But I certainly wasn’t expecting this.”

Hamish had certainly not been expecting this. He caught her eye, and the communication was like the thrust of a spear through the heart.

How could he forsake her when she deserved so much more of him?

“Lord Lambton is a kind man, Lucy.” The beautiful young woman patted his sister’s hand, adding with a smile, “I think he’d seen it as his duty to protect Cassandra from fortune hunters, but she saw it differently. I think that with age, he has mellowed. But he has lost his daughter. And he realises he will never get her back. It must be hard for a man to realise too late that he has thrown away something pure and worthy.”

Hamish shifted in his seat, and felt the heat rise in his cheeks. For she’d been looking at him when she said this.

* * *

Back in her own lodgings, Lily sat alone in her sitting room, with the lamp turned down, and only the fire for company. It had been a successful evening, but, like every evening, it took a while for the energy pulsing through her to subside.

She’d have liked company. She had so little of it. No one to speak to of her fears for the future. To talk to about their day.